In a society we are responsible not only for our own actions, but also how those actions affect others.

Exactly. But, I look at it from an individual stand-point in society, not a government mandate for society.

The government cannot legislate morality. It has been tried, and it has never worked. We may have a moral obligation to take care of each other, but
it only works like it should if each individual takes it upon himself/herself to concern themselves with the betterment of their fellow man.....if
that concern is forced upon them, it only turns into resentment.

So then how does the USA fall into a list of countries that:
1) take in and treat from countries that don't have ability or resource to treat
2) ability to treat and diagnose advanced forms of cancer
3) the amount of patients from that list that actually export thier patients becasue they can't treat effectively

The only reason social healthcare needs to be forced on people is because the gordon gekko mentality still exists in abundance, and because the
insurers have created a monster which eats money, enriches the very few whilst screwing the many.

Sometimes extreme measures are required - the world would be a very different place if every country spent more on healthcare than it does on
weaponry.

There is no place for selfishness in society - but that's the prevalant attitude in this thread.

YOU are a part of this problem. Just because someone is poor does NOT mean that you have to take from someone that has earned it. What happens when
all the "RICH" (anyone that actually has a job and makes money more than someone else) are out of work? WHO they hell are they going to get money
from?

By virtue of what you say, we should come take everything you have from you so that you can be just like all the poor.

The more I read of this type of liberal handout agenda the more I can't wait for my time on this earth to be over. I am tired of paying taxes
because I have to take care of some lazy ass slacker that realized he doesn't have to work, the government with redistribute the wealth so they are
taken care of.

I'm not part of any problem. Who started the this financial crisis? The rich, those that made a profit knowing that the poor couldn't pay their
ARMs. The rich take from the poor all the time, its greed without concern for others. People will gladly poison someone if they can make a profit
and not get in trouble. And unfortunately it seems to happen all the time. Businesses don't have ethics which is a problem. The rich have sold out
the working class by sending their jobs overseas. If they lost their jobs I'd call that fair.

People should have what they need in order to get by and excess should be avoided. That is fair. The rabid excess that many crave is what causes
these financial crisis and many other problems. There would actually be more for everyone if everyone was willing to give instead of just focusing on
"whats in it for me".

US is not the only industrialized country that does that most of the worlds industrialzed countries does that too.

It does look like good propaganda but hey this America we sure have to live to that littler dream that we are the best of the best and everytime we
bring a poor African kid or Iraqi kid for treatments in the great America it help boost PO (public opinion).

I'd be interested to know, just how much of the funding into this research is taxpayer money?

WHat I have witnessed is a number of financial contrivances that create 'financial equivalents' being contributed by private sponsors, yet the
actual 'hard' dollars are almost exclusively either from taxes at the state or federal level.

Up until most recently, the federal government grants were the cash cows of the research world. And private sponsors - especially foundations, and
institutions - while sponsoring in name - derive their revenue from federal grants allotted to them to find worthy research. Everyone gets their
10-40% of the revenue stream by virtue of 'administration and support' for making the $$ available to the researchers; who routinely 'back their
costs' into the dollar matrix to maximize their return. The government turns a blind eye because they are part of the process. The more $$ they
pump out, the more their corporate benefactors will favor them when they retire from government service and end up in the corporate leadership of
tommorow.

The researches are not all greedy bastards (more than half of them are) but those most aggregiously abusing the trust are shameless. Using federal
and sponsor dollars to seed (or incubate) businesses which they have deep financial interests in..., some even go so far as to conceal their interests
by proxy board memberships, et. al. Then they get numerous community awards for their efforts, more perks, more political relevance, and use that as
'currency' to curry more trust to abuse in the name of themselves and their favored partners.

The most vile examples of this are material sciences, pharmaceutical research, and information systems.

Everytime I hear some talking head expound on how it costs billions to research a new drug I want to puke. It's such a huge lie, and people simply
accept it. Creative accounting can make ANYTHING look expensive. Common sense doesn't seem to be evident in the auditors' arsenal of professional
tools.

Perhaps I have said to much.

It was personally offensive to be part of that. I had to leave. So I did.

EDIT TO ADD:

So you are saying that absolutley NO work to benefit ACTUAL research goes on? Sorry don't buy it.

I don’t think this is really an issue of what is a right as much as it is what is right.

We can adopt the attitude of every man for himself and you’ll wake up in hell if you try to take anything that is mine but I don’t think you will
like the way your world is going look after a few months: if you are still alive to enjoy your treasures.

Even a city that is gated against the indigent and the infirmed will not be safe from illness that goes untreated and unchecked.

We are seeing an increase in the mutation of common bacteria and viruses and the number of deaths that have occurred as the result of a bacterium that
everyone carries as normal flora on their skin and was once thought of as symbiotic can now be a death threat.

So if you think there is no benefit to adequate health care for all Americans you might want to rethink this on a more selfish level. Do we really
have the means and do you really have enough money to protect you and your family from a world that has been allowed to adapt unchecked to all the
artificial elements that we have placed in our air, our water and our food supply?

I have said before that before, we may have to go back and watch those horror movies with a less jaundiced eye. They may become your primers for
survival.

I can not get an up today data for some reasson, but the latest for me is 2004.

Taxpayers pay for most research costs, and many clinical trials as well.

That is why on clinical trials they are open to anybody.

But take the money that they used to push for lobbying and that tells another story.

Drug research costs much less than claimed
14. Drug companies claim to spend 17% of domestic sales on R&D, but more objective data reports they spend only 10% (National Science Foundation
2003). Thus, only 1.8% of sales goes to research for breakthrough new drugs (18% x 10%) (Love 2003).

15. Taxpayers pay for most research costs, and many clinical trials as well.

In 2000, for example, industry spent 18% of its $13 billion for R&D on basic research, or $2.3 billion in gross costs (National Science Foundation
2003). All of that money was subsidized by taxpayers through deductions and tax credits. Taxpayers also paid for all $18 billion in NIH funds, as well
as for R&D funds in the Department of Defense and other public budgets. Most of that money went for basic research to discover breakthrough drugs, and
public money also supports more than 5000 clinical trials (Bassand, Martin, Ryden et al. 2002). Taxpayer contributions are similar in more recent
years, only

not to mention all those "evil" terrorists with their biological weapons that the republicans are so worried about that they are willing to blow
half a Iraq out of existance to protect us from....

but, no, protecting our border is out of the question...
and well....tell ya one thing, as things stand now, I have been refusing to go to a doctor for since last year. won't go back till the bills I've
made are paid...so, well, if I happen to get sick, unless I am bad enough that it's clearly obvious that I will be wasting my boss's money by going
to work...I am going to work!!! and, unless I drop over dead at work, ain't no one gonna know what kind of little microbes are living in my body and
being passed around...
oh, well.....
as far as i know, there's no law that states the government has the right to force me to spend money I don't have to protect you from those nasty
germs!

The $28+ billion per year the US government spends on the National Institutes of Health and the significant amounts spent on health care R&D in
other federal agencies (CDC, DOE, DOD, NSF, FDA, etc) are highly valued resources for the entire global scientific community. These public sector
expenditures on R&D are more than 25 basis points of US GDP. No other country comes close.

It makes you wonder why we have to pay so much for prescribtion drugs here in the US.

Thanks. Sadly there are no equivalent studies I can find that show how research dollars are spent outside of the biological studies. Mechanical
engineering, is rife with profit as well.

Considering that since I was a child, I have been watching the various 'power houses' of 'cure finding' fail miserabley, repeatedly, while
foisting their petrochemical snake oil on the people, never EVER fully accountable for the detrimental long term effects.

Meanwhile they demonize and villify anything that might compete with their products, most notably non-patentable natural substances. You would think
that health care professionals would provide an offset for that influence, yet they don't. In fact, those physicians most vocally insistant on
approaching medicine from a 'full spectrum' perspective are automatically 'professionally suspect' in the establishment's eyes.

For some reason Royal Rife comes to mind. Even people like Edgar Cayce showed results where the 'suddenly scientist' doctors failed. But the big
boys won't even hear of it. Nor will they deign to put research dollars into an understanding of the incongruity.

Like I said before, HealthCare as we know it is a business. Medicine, should NOT be a business. Get the middelmen out of it. That includes the
government, which is not much more than a pool of corporate middlemen.

NOTHING IS FREE. I don't know why that is hard to understand. Free health care is being paid for by *someone*. The US is being retarded at the
moment and has been for awhile. Our government sucks. We have a one party rule that is running ramshod over top of our constitution

There is NOTHING in the constitution that says you get free health care or free ANYTHING.

If people had been more responsible, if government hadn't made us hand out slaves, and government was decent, we wouldn't be where we are today

Seeing Obama say that we must get credit rolling again as that is the key to financial success leaves me shaking my head. Being in debt is what got
us here. So many americans who have borrowed way more than they could ever pay back(credit cards, car loans and homes) more than they could pay
monthly are what has happened.

Its just one big cluster you know what.

No one in the US is turned away from care. My father did not have health insurance when he died in 1991. He spent a week in ICU and you know what?
My Mom worked and paid that bill. Though knowing he did not have insurance did not keep him from being treated as well as any other patient

We didn't "deserve" it. It wasn't our right. I am glad it was there and I am proud to be raised by people who have the ethics to pay what is
owed. And let me tell ya, there was no life insurance and we were in dire straights(though you would never had known it by looking at the family)

Have some pride people, be rescourceful and work. Sorry, if the world adopt that philosophy, we be a whole lot better off. That is the hope and
change we need

My "rights": self employeed biz owner who slaved for 25 years and made money the old fashion way,with sweat.
Pay out over $500.00 a month currently for 2 healthy adults(very fit,non-smokers) in insurance premiums with high deductible.
My insurance after prescription deductible is met every year covers my maintainance allergy-meds on a sliding scale,depending on price.
I pay it all out of pocket one way or another.
Go to get my monthly refill last week and the lil' darlin in front of me with 2 dirty kids in the cart goes to hand the pharmacist her "government
card" that entitles to her to pay NOTHING for the same $126.00 a month allergy drug (Singulair) that I'm paying full-pop for and she asks the clerk
to "get the card out of her wallet as her manicure isn't dry yet"...she is chatting loudly on her latest model cel-phone and laughing about the
wild night she just had.
I sure felt like I had the "right" to slap her silly at that point.

and yet...here I am....someone who needed to enlist the aid of my representatives...to get treated..

how do you explain that one?

suppose I am lying, right??

a lie that I have persisted in telling for years.

ya sure...

when it comes to healthcare, this years is gonna be a bear!
don't be surprised if you find that your health insurance disappears or becomes next to useless to you...
then well, maybe you will find that I am telling the truth.

ya know what, before we moved from NY, our property taxes between the school tax and the county, city taxes, were somewhere around 25% of your
property's value... state taxes were being hiked also, as well as fees across the board...

25% of a $100,000 house means that you pay the value of your house every four years...
and what was the number one reason they gave for these rediculous taxes??

oh ya....
the cost of healthcare, the cost of medicare and medicaid, the cost to keep their employees insured...

gee...wonder what kind of contribution that played into the current mess...

I pay $750 per mo here in florida for my insurance but its getting harder and harder to afford it because business is really slow. On top of me
paying for my own high priced health insurance I get to pay for the huge salaries of the banking industry, the huge paychecks of the automakers
although I choose not to buy their crap, and I get to pay the big salaries subsidizing ag, oil, etc. Im sorry people the more and more I see the
government giving the above bailouts the more and more Im for nationalized healthcare. We can debate whether bailing these guys out or subsidizing is
right or not (its not right at all) but the fact is we are doing and have been doing it. Im sick of paying enormous taxes and not getting crap in
return.

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